Fox News is confirming it
http://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/2016/04/21/pop-superstar-prince-dies-57/
CNN still waffling
http://www.cnn.com/2016/04/21/entertainment/prince-estate-death/index.html
Just heard. Saw him in concert several times....another icon gone
Lets go crazy
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emq3NFnL4kI)
He was 57. Way to young.
RIP.
Screw this year. >:(
Thanks for the music, tiny man.
Great singer.
Purple Rain was a legend movie. Unfortunately, I never got to see him live.
RIP wee fella :'(
That's a shocker. Another shocker was I didn't realize Prince was a year older than me. I enjoyed his music, he was pretty unique. Hate to see another musical legend pass so young.
Man o man...the strange thing is he and MJ were basically the same age and Prince was older by two months...always thought of him as younger.
Remember the summer of '83 and money being tight and how your friends were your source for music. The best wargamer I ever met was a fan of both MJ and Prince as was I. So I bought 1999 and he bought Thriller. Then we had an excuse to hang out.
And now all three are gone.
The world is slowly going silent...:(
Was not a fan, but damn. Will the last surviving member of the entertainment industry left on 12/31/16, please turn out the lights.
RIP (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/af/Prince_logo.svg/37px-Prince_logo.svg.png)
With the gathering of artists the God is calling home, you got to wonder what great cataclysm awaits the rest of us, that he wants the band warmed up.
Drudge must be a fan. DR is all purple (http://www.drudgereport.com/).
Funk/soul master shreds classic rock guitar. Love him or hate him, it's going to be a long, looooooooooooong time before another more versatile superstar comes along
[yt]https://youtu.be/6SFNW5F8K9Y[/yt]
^Wow, I had no idea he could play like that! He owned that guitar! :o
Quote from: bbmike on April 21, 2016, 04:28:42 PM
^Wow, I had no idea he could play like that! He owned that guitar! :o
Yeah, that's just one of many, many examples you can easily find online of his guitar playing. The dude was phenomenal. I wasn't a huge fan of his music, but I'll never deny he was a bad-ass talented mofo
Nice find. I love seeing groups of really great artists playing together. Must be a thrill for them too. All those people can actually play well. I'm not a big fan of Prince but he could shred with the best of them.
RIP.
Incidentally, the kid behind Tom Petty on the right with the goofy grin and oversized acoustic guitar, is George Harrison's son.
Yeah... Dhani Harrison looks like his dear old dad....
This sucks.
George RR Martin is writing 2016
I heard on the radio that Prince played a lot more than just the guitar. In fact, on one album, he played all, or almost all, of the instruments.
RIP Prince. He was always a favorite. And his talent was undeniable. Never saw him in concert, wish I had.
Quote from: OJsDad on April 21, 2016, 07:06:35 PM
I heard on the radio that Prince played a lot more than just the guitar. In fact, on one album, he played all, or almost all, of the instruments.
He played a ton of instruments, and I think it was Sign o' The Times that he played all the instruments on the entire album. But his guitar playing was unparalleled.
^His first three albums featured him playing every instrument and he produced each of them, starting in 1978.
Quote from: Gusington on April 21, 2016, 08:44:03 PM
^His first three albums featured him playing every instrument and he produced each of them, starting in 1978.
That was pre-Revolution, right?
Kevin Smith's comment on FaceBook
QuoteThe music of #Prince was essentially the soundtrack to my life. My first girlfriend introduced me to his work, so any teenage heavy petting session was scored by the lusty purple pipes of his Royal Badness. #1999 and #PurpleRain were some of the first albums I ever bought. In 1989, his #Batman soundtrack never left my rack system. When we made #Clerks in 1993, the Love Symbol album was on a constant loop in my car's cassette player. @samosier & I were almost killed on the Turnpike in the pouring rain when our car momentarily slid under an 18-wheeler as we were funking out to 'My Name Is Prince' (we sang only 'The Morning Papers' for the rest of the way home). My wife & I flew to Minnesota for the Rave Un2 the Y2K concert at #PaisleyPark at the turn of the century, solely as fans. Less than a year later, I'd meet and work with the icon himself when I returned to Paisley Park to shoot a documentary with Prince during his Rainbow Children album listening party. I was lucky to have spent any time with him at all but I was far luckier just simply being alive in the Prince era. His music moved me, his lyrics captured my imagination, his journey from musical Minnesotan to worldwide superstar inspired me. I honestly thought I'd die before Prince - so it's sad to think there will be no new music in which he could sing us his point-of-view on the rest of his unique and legendary life. But having spent time at Paisley Park with the prolific Prince, I know there's a vault full of unreleased tracks we've still yet to hear. I told a long story about my week-long experience of working with Prince on the first Evening with Kevin Smith DVD - a story that would go on to help solidify my reputation outside of filmmaking as a raconteur. So as much as I got from Prince as a fan of good music, he also helped to shape ol' Silent Bob's second career as a talker. I cried today because I realized what a role model Prince always was to me: an Artist with a capital A who was not afraid to bite the hand that fed, never hesitated to reinvent himself, and was always entertaining on any stage. Today we lost one of the greatest Artists who ever lived. RIP, purple genius. Nothing compared 2 U...
(https://scontent.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/13015136_10153547900381179_7621997159685296601_n.jpg?oh=1aeabf741170a2af3de5a49f7eae1623&oe=57A33BBE)
(https://scontent.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xaf1/v/t1.0-9/13012694_1187338231296928_5568268347660025901_n.jpg?oh=f1c38dc16836d57422b7118da8d80dac&oe=57B07226)
Best tribute I've seen yet
(https://scontent.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xfp1/v/t1.0-9/13001153_10209810167159625_868706128930163098_n.jpg?oh=457418af1823769f335edd4ff0c9348a&oe=57A357C0)
Pre-Revolution, IIRC. The Revolution came together for The Purple Rain album and movie and tour.
Quote from: Gusington on April 21, 2016, 09:19:40 PM
Pre-Revolution, IIRC. The Revolution came together for The Purple Rain album and movie and tour.
They did at least 1 album before Purple Rain, b/c 1999 was right before that one. Dunno about before 1999, but I'm sure Wikipedia is all it...
Quote from: bbmike on April 21, 2016, 04:28:42 PM
^Wow, I had no idea he could play like that! He owned that guitar! :o
Yep. He might be the most underrated guitarist ever, because you just don't think of him playing one. But goddamn could he shred. Actually, he could pretty much play anything.
Sigh.
we were chatting with Bayonet Jr about what an artist he was and then started talking about all the songs he wrote for other people, and at least 4 of them became the biggest hits in those artists' careers
Jungle Love - The Time
I Feel For You - Chaka Khan
Nothing Compares to U - Sinead O'Connor
The Glamorous Life - Sheila E
Oh yeah, and
Manic Monday - The Bangles (not technically their biggest hit b/c of Walk Like an Egyptian, but more enduring b/c it's not seen as a gimmick song)
Stand Back - Stevie Nicks
Sugar Walls - Sheena Easton
How Come U Don't Call Me Anymore - Alicia Keys
now a few of those he recorded himself, too (I Feel For You / How Come U Don't Call Me Anymore) but other people made them famous
I'm not sure it's possible to overstate how awesome that dude was, and unlike damn near everyone else who's dies lately, it's pretty hard to find something personally unlikeable about him - no drug habits, no pedophilia... etc etc
And he surrounded himself with the hottest women. I see no issues there.
FWIW the NY Daily News states that the Revolution came together for Purple Rain and then broke up right before Sign o The Times, so that makes it about a 5 year stint. Take it as you will from the NY Daily News, though.
Quote from: bayonetbrant on April 21, 2016, 09:24:58 PM
Quote from: Gusington on April 21, 2016, 09:19:40 PM
Pre-Revolution, IIRC. The Revolution came together for The Purple Rain album and movie and tour.
They did at least 1 album before Purple Rain, b/c 1999 was right before that one. Dunno about before 1999, but I'm sure Wikipedia is all it...
Per Wikipedia
QuoteFrom 1982–1983, when the band was almost identified as The Revolution, it consisted of:
Prince on lead vocals, guitar, and piano
Dez Dickerson on guitar
Brown Mark on bass
Bobby Z. on drums & percussion
Lisa Coleman on keyboards and piano
Matt Fink on keyboards
The words "and the Revolution" can be seen printed backwards on the cover of his fifth album 1999. The band members were curious as to if they were getting a real name, but Prince had held back from fully calling the group The Revolution partly because of Dez Dickerson's wishes to leave the band. When the 1999 Tour ended, Dez Dickerson finally left the band for religious reasons and was replaced by Lisa's childhood friend Wendy Melvoin. Prince told Dickerson that he needed three years from him, and Dickerson wasn't willing to commit. Prince told Dickerson he'd leave him on payroll and honor his contract, which Prince did. Dickerson went on to eventually work for independent Christian record label Star Song. The Melvoin-Coleman tandem shortly thereafter formed a special bond with Prince and greatly influenced his output during the rest of their tenure in the band. Prince's former mostly R&B/funk offerings would be more diversified with rock, pop and classical music elements.
So they were "sort of" The Revolution on the 1999 album.
Quote from: bayonetbrant on April 21, 2016, 06:53:05 PM
George RR Martin is writing 2016
Ok, this was pretty good.
Quote from: bayonetbrant on April 22, 2016, 06:30:03 AMI'm not sure it's possible to overstate how awesome that dude was, and unlike damn near everyone else who's dies lately, it's pretty hard to find something personally unlikeable about him - no drug habits, no pedophilia... etc etc
He had some serious moral problems; people are just being nice and not talking about them. 6 days before he died, he was in the hospital for a drug overdose. That wasn't new: he would find young women to promote, get them horribly hooked on drugs and wild sex as part of his own lifestyle, and then move along to the next new thing when he got bored or they escaped him.
One of the first, and the most public such case, was Denise Matthews, whom Prince renamed as "Vanity", as part of an ego trip to make her into the female version of himself. After nearly dying of a crack overdose in the mid-90s, she renounced her life in music and Hollywood and became a Christian evangelist (marrying Oakland Raider Anthony Smith soon afterward). But the drugs had ruined her body, especially her kidneys -- she had to spend 20 minutes five times a day each day for the rest of her life on dialysis.
She died this February of renal failure, age 57 -- the illness that nearly killed her the first time, a lingering delay of about 20 years.
Was he a talented and creative artist? No doubt. Should the moral judgment of his life be confined to things like this? I don't think so; anyone who knows me knows I firmly believe God will allow no good in what we do in life to be lost, and I'm willing to recognize and remember any charity and other true love he gave to anyone no matter how large or small it might seem to other people.
But I remember his victims, too. And that includes everyone he led to live, to whatever degree, the shattered and shattering way he lived.
He could have been just as good an artist, or even a better one, without living the life he insisted on living. And that's a damned shame.
Quote from: JasonPratt on April 22, 2016, 09:25:10 AMHe had some serious moral problems; people are just being nice and not talking about them. 6 days before he died, he was in the hospital for a drug overdose. That wasn't new: he would find young women to promote, get them horribly hooked on drugs and wild sex as part of his own lifestyle, and then move along to the next new thing when he got bored or they escaped him.
Where was it documented as a drug overdose?
I saw it on news outlets last night.
The overdose was 6 (now 7) days ago. The post-mortem won't happen until Monday. He was still recovering when he gave his last performance, shortly before his death -- he introduced the crowd to his doctor.
Quote from: JasonPratt on April 22, 2016, 10:21:49 AM
I saw it on news outlets last night.
The overdose was 6 (now 7) days ago. The post-mortem won't happen until Monday. He was still recovering when he gave his last performance, shortly before his death -- he introduced the crowd to his doctor.
Everything I saw about the emergency landing/hospitalization was flu-related / possible TB. There was nothing about a drug overdose in any of the legit media coverage.
Well, maybe CNN and Fox aren't legit. ;) But neither have I heard more about it since then, so it's entirely possible they were passing on speculation.
In his favor, I'll add that he took his religion seriously enough to take his turn among the Jehovah's Witnesses doing evangelization. O:-)
Quote from: JasonPratt on April 22, 2016, 11:01:10 AM
Well, maybe CNN and Fox aren't legit. ;) But neither have I heard more about it since then, so it's entirely possible they were passing on speculation.
In his favor, I'll add that he took his religion seriously enough to take his turn among the Jehovah's Witnesses doing evangelization. O:-)
I never saw it from them, either - the only actual reports I saw were related to some sort of respiratory issue like the flu. Not saying there was never a report of an OD, just that it wasn't widespread enough that it being reported as fact on every outlet.
(https://scontent.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xpf1/v/t1.0-9/13012755_10153794462603445_4899725724705556680_n.jpg?oh=283c6f3cb2ce055d9633d80f6e84024b&oe=57BBF709)
The guy from TMZ was reporting last night on Megan Kelly's show that the emergency landing and treatment involved a drug overdose and he was administered an anti-opiate IM at the hospital but left there refusing to stay against their advice because they could not provide him a private room.
Several other news outlet reports along the same line are still archived on a "prince drug overdose" search; although I didn't find anything from AP or Reuters or one of the news networks this morning.
How much of that was just reposting the TMZ source, I don't know -- probably a lot.
^I've read in some online gossip magazines that it may have been percocet. The rumor is also flying around that Prince had HIV and contracted it in the 1990s.
Today's NYT, courtesy of Chevrolet
(https://scontent.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xtf1/v/t1.0-9/13077102_10153413588386933_5481000295498728755_n.jpg?oh=3130ca88d8e74eb6b85c16f45297f14f&oe=57B2F16F)
That is awesome and so sad at the same time.
Quote from: JasonPratt on April 22, 2016, 11:01:10 AM
In his favor, I'll add that he took his religion seriously enough to take his turn among the Jehovah's Witnesses doing evangelization. O:-)
Maybe I'm missing something here but taking ones religion seriously, in and of itself, isn't much of a plus. There are plenty of suckers in ISIS who take their religion seriously.
Edit: Speaking of JW, there are a couple of old ladies who come chat with me once in a while. Yesterday, I had a wargame day (US: Europe) scheduled with a transgendered opponent at 1PM. Just before 1 I saw the ladies talking to neighbors across the street for a bit.
I was expecting the doorbell to ring any minute, and it was even odds whether it would be the JW or my opponent. It finally did, and it turned out to be her. I wonder if the JW saw her walk up and decided to stay clear. ;D ;D :D ;D ;D
Are you in Chicago?
Sadly, I have to count myself among the ranks of those who saw Prince as more of a technically proficient pop star than as a musical genius. I am completely unfamiliar with anything he has recorded in the last 20 years and, while it may or may not be true that I have been living in a cave, I have adequate radio reception here.
Was never a big fan but a few years ago my wife dragged me to a Prince concert. He put on one hell of a show. One of the most electric concerts I have ever seen.
OK, some of these twitter quips about Prince are just awesome...
(https://www.grogheads.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2F2.media.collegehumor.cvcdn.com%2F51%2F14%2F831ed8eb35c9039e373c72788ea5e32a.jpg&hash=ba0169c994b3d06e59eb04059202d8da640c7c6b)
Quote from: Ubercat on April 22, 2016, 09:40:11 PM
Quote from: JasonPratt on April 22, 2016, 11:01:10 AM
In his favor, I'll add that he took his religion seriously enough to take his turn among the Jehovah's Witnesses doing evangelization. O:-)
Maybe I'm missing something here but taking ones religion seriously, in and of itself, isn't much of a plus. There are plenty of suckers in ISIS who take their religion seriously.
I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt that like most other evangelists he genuinely was trying to help those people by doing that; and was maybe showing some humility at the same time.
I fully grant (because after all I was criticizing him for this) that he could have taken his religion more seriously by living better than he did, whether when he was 7DA or JH. Neither group of Christians (trinitarian and high unitarian respectively, both of them sharing some group origins in the 1800s) encourages the kind of life he insisted on choosing to lead. Maybe he thought he could buy a pass for his life otherwise by putting in some time trying to sales pitch for God -- I don't know, although I know there are people in any religious group who have that mindset. It's tempting, for me anyway, to think that was his intention, as an inference drawn from the life he led otherwise. But I have a tendency to think the worst of people.
And after all I don't really know. So I'm trying to give him the benefit of my doubt instead of the other way around.
I can't
feel any fondness for him, but I'm willing to acknowledge I should, relatedly, actively hope he did clean up his life to some real extent before he died and didn't keep taking drugs -- that it was a false rumor (whether accidentally or maliciously in origin). I shouldn't be so willing to believe the worst of him.
And after all, however much he helped ruin however many people's lives, he could have been someone like the ISIS guys. Knocking on doors to help save someone from a fire and set them free from imprisonment, right or wrong, is at least a little different in intention from knocking down doors to enslave and throw people into a fire. O:-)
Good SNL special on him right now. He was on that show a lot.
Quote from: JasonPratt on April 22, 2016, 09:25:10 AM
Quote from: bayonetbrant on April 22, 2016, 06:30:03 AMI'm not sure it's possible to overstate how awesome that dude was, and unlike damn near everyone else who's dies lately, it's pretty hard to find something personally unlikeable about him - no drug habits, no pedophilia... etc etc
He had some serious moral problems; people are just being nice and not talking about them. 6 days before he died, he was in the hospital for a drug overdose. That wasn't new: he would find young women to promote, get them horribly hooked on drugs and wild sex as part of his own lifestyle, and then move along to the next new thing when he got bored or they escaped him.
One of the first, and the most public such case, was Denise Matthews, whom Prince renamed as "Vanity", as part of an ego trip to make her into the female version of himself. After nearly dying of a crack overdose in the mid-90s, she renounced her life in music and Hollywood and became a Christian evangelist (marrying Oakland Raider Anthony Smith soon afterward). But the drugs had ruined her body, especially her kidneys -- she had to spend 20 minutes five times a day each day for the rest of her life on dialysis.
She died this February of renal failure, age 57 -- the illness that nearly killed her the first time, a lingering delay of about 20 years.
Was he a talented and creative artist? No doubt. Should the moral judgment of his life be confined to things like this? I don't think so; anyone who knows me knows I firmly believe God will allow no good in what we do in life to be lost, and I'm willing to recognize and remember any charity and other true love he gave to anyone no matter how large or small it might seem to other people.
But I remember his victims, too. And that includes everyone he led to live, to whatever degree, the shattered and shattering way he lived.
He could have been just as good an artist, or even a better one, without living the life he insisted on living. And that's a damned shame.
Do you have actually sources for this info? I know Vanity was on drugs, but I'm pretty sure she was actually in rehab before she ever met Prince. She also dated Nikki Sixx of Motley Crue in the late 80's; lots of drugs there. She didn't OD until '94. She also did dialysis 3 times a week, not 5 times a day (according to her gofundme page). What you say may be 100% correct, I've just never heard it.
The obit from The Economist
QuoteSO SEXY, freedom. So sexy, he couldn't begin to explain it. Free to put on mascara, paint his lips, glue on long eyelashes to lower, flutter and seduce. Wear any colour, especially purple, but also electric blue, scarlet, glitter-silver and eye-aching lizard green. Strut in ruffles, squeeze in black leather, preen his naked midriff, shake his naked ass out of a yellow jumpsuit. Stack his heels, until his elfin figure became a giant. Dance with a white man, writhe with a black woman, kiss both, couple with either, be both races and sexes and neither in one cat-like, commanding frame. And, along the way, sell more than 100m records worldwide.
Free in his music, too. Brutal as a rapper, tender as a balladeer, swooping smoothly from bass to falsetto. Astounding on guitar, soaring off into a universe of riffs and improvisations. At the half-time concert at the Super Bowl at Miami in 2007, in torrential rain, he seemed unable to stop; and it was the same on piano, keyboards, percussion, drums. He played 27 instruments on his first album, "For You", in 1978, but felt he had the hang of thousands.
A thousand genres, too, from funk ("Kiss"), dance ("Uptown"), rock ("The Cross"), techno ("New World"), pop ("When Doves Cry"), obscenity ("Jack U Off"), beauty ("Nothing Compares 2 U") and all the world in between. Half a dozen genres in the same song, sometimes. The rhythm & blues of Little Richard, the soul of Sly Stone, the clicks and whoops of Michael Jackson, James Brown, Miles Davis, Marvin Gaye, Duke Ellington, were mixed up, fused, made fantastic, and poured in astonishing profusion through his guitar. If he couldn't get the music out of his head, everyone's music as well as his, he couldn't function.
Most necessary of all was the freedom to reinvent who he was, throw the world off his track, and hide. In the mid-1980s he refused to give interviews, reducing any to the statement: "I'm looking 4 the ladder." When writing songs for other people he hid behind the names "Jamie Starr" and "Alexander Nevermind". In the wake of his album "Purple Rain" (1984), which sold more than 20m copies, became a film and won him an Academy Award for best score, he made a cult of that colour, like a cloak. The best ruse came in 1993 when he changed his name to an unpronounceable symbol that combined, gracefully, the male and female signs. It couldn't even be whispered; he drew it on the air. If people called him Prince, he didn't know who they were referring to. His name was right there, beautifully enciphered: all he was, and all his music was about.
There was also a sharp point behind it. He was fighting his recording company, Warner Bros, because they weren't releasing his albums fast enough to keep up with the music inside him. He was defying them because the name "Prince" was now their property, not his. Not even the rights to his own songs belonged to him. He wasn't going to be yet another black entertainer selling his soul, as Little Richard had, for a new car and a bucket of chicken. He'd got a pink Cadillac thanks to Warner Bros; that was enough. At the Brit Awards in 1995 his 13 words of thanks concluded: "In concert: Perfectly free. On record: Slave." "SLAVE" was written on his face too, in bold black pen. After 19 years he wrestled free, putting out an album called "Emancipation" and answering to Prince again.He made a stand for all black musicians, not just himself.
Uncatchable
Could anything pin him down? Not women: his two marriages were unhappy, and didn't last. Not time: his sense of it was limited to an indefinite future, his appearances onstage usually late. Not expectations, because he could cancel shows on a whim and then as suddenly put them on, impromptu, all-night and free. Not religion, because his fervour as a fresh-minted vegan, teetotal Jehovah's Witness came and went, together with the spirits who sometimes ordered him around.
Roots defined him slightly. He was born and schooled in Minnesota and stayed loyal to it, supporting the Timberwolves, sneaking into the Dakota Jazz Club in Minneapolis and building his studio complex at Paisley Park in Chanhassen. There, though, he was as elusive as ever, not to be caught on any recording device, including mobile phones. Fleeting impressions only, like vivid strobes. The internet bothered him, and he strove to ban his music from Spotify, iTunes and anywhere where he could not control it. For a while he tried to ban his showman's likeness, too.
Only one thing held him. He felt its tingling grip when he was seven, struggling to be good enough to be allowed to play his father's piano. It possessed him at Minneapolis Central High School: all those hours in the music room, his already-high-teased hair nodding over the keys, after his friends had gone home. It roared through his body on the stage like a river without end. At Paisley Park, if he was not at his purple grand piano, he would be recording; and though he produced 39 studio albums, four in his last 19 months alone, he still had shelves of recordings that were not quite ready, not sufficiently perfect, in his vault: enough material (some said) to make annual albums for the next hundred years.
To be bound to music was sexier even than freedom. So he let it fill both his days and his white, unsleeping nights.
Quote from: bayonetbrant on April 21, 2016, 04:19:33 PM
Funk/soul master shreds classic rock guitar. Love him or hate him, it's going to be a long, looooooooooooong time before another more versatile superstar comes along
[yt]https://youtu.be/6SFNW5F8K9Y[/yt]
Required reading about this performance
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/04/28/arts/music/prince-guitar-rock-hall-of-fame.html
especially this part:
QuoteGALLEN They finish, and I go up to Jeff and Tom, and I sort of huddle up with these guys, and I'm like: "This cannot be happening. I don't even know if we're going to get another rehearsal with him. [Prince]. But this guy cannot be playing the solos throughout the song." So I talk to Prince about it, I sort of pull him aside and had a private conversation with him, and he was like: "Look, let this guy do what he does, and I'll just step in at the end. For the end solo, forget the middle solo." And he goes, "Don't worry about it." And then he leaves. They never rehearsed it, really. Never really showed us what he was going to do, and he left, basically telling me, the producer of the show, not to worry. And the rest is history. It became one of the most satisfying musical moments in my history of watching and producing live music.
another great memory piece
http://www.charlotteobserver.com/entertainment/arts-culture/article74458597.html
http://wncn.com/2016/05/03/music-icon-prince-once-crashed-nc-state-frat-party/
Accidental opioid overdose ruled as cause of death (http://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/2016/06/02/prince-died-opioid-overdose-medical-examiners-office-reveals.html?intcmp=hpbt1) :(
There is absolutely no effing reason to prescribe Fentanyl to anyone for home use. It's the nuclear option of opiates and only for use during, and after, surgery in a controlled hospital setting. Whomever gave it to Prince needs to be prosecuted.
BTW, back in 2002 the Russians used it to try and knock out a theater-full of bombed-up Chechen terrorists and 800-odd hostages and things did not go well at all.
Quote from: Staggerwing on June 02, 2016, 07:49:21 PM
There is absolutely no effing reason to prescribe Fentanyl to anyone for home use. It's the nuclear option of opiates and only for use during, and after, surgery in a controlled hospital setting. Whomever gave it to Prince needs to be prosecuted.
According to Wiki:
"Fentanyl is approximately 80 to 100 times more potent than morphine and roughly 40 to 50 times more potent than pharmaceutical grade (100% pure) heroin."
Christ.
"Oh no, did I give that to Prince by complete accident and not at all by his request as his 'special' doctor?" ::) :buck2:
That sort of thing doesn't happen by accident. I expect the strategy was that small amounts were easier than morphine or heroin to move, use, and keep tucked away somewhere.
Quote from: JasonPratt on June 06, 2016, 11:54:17 AM
"Oh no, did I give that to Prince by complete accident and not at all by his request as his 'special' doctor?" ::) :buck2:
That sort of thing doesn't happen by accident. I expect the strategy was that small amounts were easier than morphine or heroin to move, use, and keep tucked away somewhere.
More than likely Prince probably started to use prescribed opioids after some kind of injury or surgery and just kept on taking them. After that it probably became a matter of 'doctor shopping' until he found one who would keep writing Rx's with no questions (for a 'Princely' retainer, I'm certain.) It is probably fair to say that a surprising number of folks addicted to legally manufactured drugs didn't start because they wanted to get high, but because of what was originally a medical need.
I'm not going to say that's impossible -- maybe he cleaned up his act immensely and then entirely by accident got hooked on opiates (again). It isn't like I've been paying attention to him since I stopped having to listen to Top 40. Maybe he became a very different person from what he used to be.
I guess any fans following his career would have a better idea about that. :) My distantly ill-formed impression, though, is that he was still the same kind of person who did as much booze and drugs as he thought he could get away with. But as noted, that's a distantly ill-formed impression.
What isn't a distantly ill-formed impression, is that anyone so hooked on opiates that he had to take Fentanyl, has long passed the accidental addiction stage, into the criminally irresponsible stage, along with whoever was supplying him. If 100% pure heroin isn't good enough for you...!
It looks, in other words, like a logical extension of his earlier behavior, not like an extended sad accident that anyone could have fallen into.
http://www.gq.com/story/prince-stories